Saturday, February 23, 2013

So last week I mentioned that I went on a Harry Potter crafting binge for Christmas. I really got carried away and decided to make wands. I found a really great tutorial. It's easy to follow and the supplies are pretty inexpensive. Since the wands were so easy to make, I ended up making more than I needed. I'll save them for future gifts for friends.

For the most part, I followed the tutorial, but of course I had to do things my own way. In the end, I think that the changes I made make for an overall better and more durable wand.

My tips for making the best Harry Potter wand:

I used dowels sized at 3/16 in. They were cheaper and easier to find than a pack of chopsticks. The dowels also allow you to be a bit more creative. You can cut the dowels to different lengths and also find them in different thicknesses.

I made some small polymer clay decorative pieces. I baked the clay pieces first and then attached them to the wand while I was adding the glue.

Make sure you let the hot glue cool completely before painting.

Make sure you prime the wands first with a layer or two of white. It helps the final colors stick better.

To give the wands a nice shiny finish and durability, I used the Pledge Floor Finish with Future Shine stuff that I'm always talking about. Apply three layers, waiting about 30 minutes before adding another layer. Then let the wands dry completely overnight. This gives the wands a nice smooth and hard finish, which will make them last longer especially if they're going to be handled a lot by children.

That's all the tips I have. I hope you all have a lot of fun making the wands! Next week I'll show you how to make easy and gorgeous wand boxes!

All the wands together. I made sure to keep one for myself!

I tried my best to make all the wands different. I definitely strayed from making more traditional looking wands.

That's all for this week folks! Remember to have fun with this project and happy crafting! One more thing, please make sure you follow us on Pinterest! ♥ Follow SugiAi

Saturday, February 16, 2013

I went all out this past Christmas and decided to make my sisters a bunch of Harry Potter stuff. I saw pictures of this incredible Harry Potter monopoly set and thought that it was something you could buy. After doing a quick search it lead me to this incredible blog. To my great delight he made all his files available here for free! If you do use his files please respect his request to only use the files for personal and not monetary reasons. He worked really hard on the designs and it was incredibly kind of him to just give the files away for free.

Since I didn't have to worry about designing the board and cards, I was able to focus on making my own game pieces. They were all made from polymer clay. If you've never worked with it before you can check out this post to get an idea of how to do it. One new tip I have about making polymer clay charms is how to finish them. I still use the future shine floor finish, but instead of doing one layer and baking it again, I do several layers and just let the pieces dry for 30 minutes before putting on a new layer. I do about 5 layers before letting the pieces dry fully over night. I find that this makes the finish shinier and sturdier.

Alright on to the pieces and feel free to make similar pieces. I honestly just chose things that wouldn't take too long to make.

All the pieces together. I made eight because the game came with eight pieces.

The Sorting Hat ended up being my favorite piece! I'm really happy with how it came out.

The Golden snitch! I made sure to paint this with really nice metallic acrylics.

Hedwig

The Monster Book of Monsters

I tried my best to make the Whomping Willow

Padfoot

Nagini

My really sad attempt to make the Goblet of Fire

I also decided to paint all the houses like the four houses of Hogwarts and I spray painted all the hotels gold.

I divided the houses up evenly and then painted them with acrylics. I sealed them with the same stuff I use to seal the clay pieces.

The hotels look really nice in gold!

To round this post out I'll leave you with some tips to make sure your Monopoly ends up a success.

Go get the board and box top and bottom printed somewhere! I stubbornly printed things out on my own and it was really hard getting everything to align nicely. I had to print everything out in pieces because I only have a standard printer.

Print all the cards on cardstock and then laminate them.

Buy the cheapest Monopoly game that you can find, since you're going to be butchering it. I got mine for $10 at Wal-mart.

That's all for this week folks! I hope you go out and make your own Harry Potter Monopoly! Happy crafting and I'll have more Harry Potter crafts for you in the coming weeks!♥ Oh and one more thing; we finally got Pinterest for the blog so please be sure to follow us! SugiAi